A/HRC/8/5 page 22 IV. ACCESS TO REMEDIES 82. Effective grievance mechanisms play an important role in the State duty to protect, in both its legal and policy dimensions, as well as in the corporate responsibility to respect. State regulation proscribing certain corporate conduct will have little impact without accompanying mechanisms to investigate, punish, and redress abuses. Equally, the corporate responsibility to respect requires a means for those who believe they have been harmed to bring this to the attention of the company and seek remediation, without prejudice to legal channels available. Providing access to remedy does not presume that all allegations represent real abuses or bona fide complaints. 83. Expectations for States to take concrete steps to adjudicate corporate-related human rights harm are expanding. Treaty bodies increasingly recommend that States investigate and punish human rights abuse by corporations and provide access to redress for such abuse when it affects persons within their jurisdiction.49 Redress could include compensation, restitution, guarantees of non-repetition, changes in relevant law and public apologies. As discussed earlier, regulators are also using new tools to hold corporations accountable under both civil and criminal law, focused on failures in organizational culture. 84. Non-judicial mechanisms play an important role alongside judicial processes. They may be particularly significant in a country where courts are unable, for whatever reason, to provide adequate and effective access to remedy. Yet they are also important in societies with well-functioning rule of law institutions, where they may provide a more immediate, accessible, affordable, and adaptable point of initial recourse. 85. State-based, non-judicial mechanisms include agencies with oversight of particular standards (for example, health and safety); publicly funded mediation services, such as those handling labour rights disputes in the United Kingdom and South Africa; national human rights institutions; or mechanisms such as the OECD’s National Contact Points. 86. Non-State mechanisms may be linked to industry-based or multi-industry organizations; to multi-stakeholder initiatives ensuring member compliance with standards; to project financiers requiring certain standards of clients; or to particular companies or projects. Non-State mechanisms must not undermine the strengthening of State institutions, particularly judicial mechanisms, but can offer additional opportunities for recourse and redress. 87. Yet this patchwork of mechanisms remains incomplete and flawed. It must be improved in its parts and as a whole. 49 For instance, the Committee on the Rights of the Child increasingly recommends that States parties comply with article 3 (4) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, which requires them to take measures, where appropriate and, subject to national law, to establish criminal, civil or administrative liability of legal persons for treaty offences. See A/HRC/4/35/Add.1, para. 64.